September 06, 2003
Higgledy Piggledy
Albert A Michelson
Did his experiment,
Came away miffed.
"Need a more accurate
Interferometer!
Back to the drawing board --
Can't get the drift."
A splendid example of Double Dactyl comic verse, there. A competition winner, I believe, from Asimov's way back in my youth -- sometime in the early 1980s, I should think. Funny what sticks in your mind. Alas, though I remember the words I don't know their author, so this flagrant copyright breach can't even be mitigated by proper attribution.
Drunk and delirious as I am, I can't remember why I started with that. I'm sure there was a good reason, but now it's gone with the wind.
Still, what a great verse, eh? The Double Dactyl form is taxing in a pointedly silly way -- the kind of constraint-based comedy that would surely have appealed to the Oulipians -- and yet the writer here, whoever s/he was, glides over it effortlessly to summarise a seminal moment in late 19th century physics. Of course, if you don't already know what it's about, you're stuffed. Those scant syllables aren't there to impart knowledge, only to entertain. It's a classic geek joke: wonderfully witty to those in the know, utterly incomprehensible to everyone else. Don't understand it? Welcome aboard the B Ark. (Look, there's another one.)
The point of all this escapes me. Except, obviously: steer clear of alcohol and drugs, kids. They fuck you up.
Ahem.
There's this tendency I have, and I think others have it too, to consider myself more approachable than I am, and everybody else less approachable than they are. This can be bad news in nearly every kind of social interaction, and it's certainly a curse on the gay scene. From genteel tea dances to sleazy naked fuck parties, you can rely on that wallflower gene to express itself. I can't tell you how many dodgy backroom hellholes I've been in where everyone has hung back exchanging looks until the end of the night and then tottered off untouched and unsatisfied. All so busy trying to look available that we never avail.
The same dynamic, I suspect, affects the blogiverse. Certainly, there are many blogs I regularly read that I'm far too intimidated by to comment on. I'm not going to presume the converse is true here -- other considerations aside, who could possibly be intimidated by lickle ol' me? -- but I do find myself reading the entries in some blogs and being astonished to see them go uncommented. While not commenting myself, of course.
My defensive response to this -- this shyness, I guess we should call it, with apologies to Shyboy -- is to be a bit of a twat. Thus I wind up posting comments on various blogs that, if not exactly belligerent, are at least pompous or pedantic or somehow tinged with hostility. This is a pretty despicable -- and self-defeating -- trait, but I can't seem to help it.
Goddammit, I've lost the thread again. Was there actually something I intended to say here?
Apparently not.
Sleepless young programmer
Feels philosophical,
Bangs out some text:
Vaguely confessional,
Cod-exegetical,
Self-deconstructing and
Damn under-sexed. Posted by: M at September 7, 2003 01:11 AM
Walkytalkologist,
Stuck up on formula --
Rather a bore.
Anal-retentive or
Hyperfastidious?
Mornington Crescent links
Out him for sure. :) Posted by: M at September 7, 2003 07:19 PM
sits the interpreter
sweating and hoping he's
getting the gist later alone in his
two-bed apartment a
ployglot blogger sits
fretting and pissed Posted by: me again at September 7, 2003 10:32 PM
And are we about to subvert the comments section into a kind of real-time webchat?
Would that be wise?
So many questions! Posted by: me again at September 7, 2003 10:36 PM
Pseudonymed 'me again'
Rather flirtatiously
Glosses the blog.
Odd how this page makes a
Counterintuitive
Substitute forum for
Cadging a snog. (I know, but it was a rush job ...) Posted by: M at September 7, 2003 10:57 PM
makes with the syllables
charming participants
into the loop
soon there's an audience
raising the decibels
threatening possible
alphabet soup Posted by: me again at September 7, 2003 11:17 PM
Posted by: me again at September 7, 2003 11:19 PM
.css tyranny
Don't feel I'm quite myself
Inside this skin.
Need to be forced by a
Toppy typographist
Into a shape that I'm
Comfortable in. (should have stopped before that one) Posted by: M at September 7, 2003 11:30 PM
said the dactyling Eurodan
rhyming and scanning
his neurones to sleep
only to wake with his
face on the keyboard
from trying to scan
'counting', 'triplets' and 'sheep' Posted by: me again at September 8, 2003 12:08 AM
As I drift by this morning
Forty fresh comments
It just cannot last
Alcohol tempered
These wits that I'm reading
Or could it just be
My mind works nowt as fast? Crikey, I don't know how you guys manage; my breakfast-time garbage doesn't compare. Posted by: Stairs at September 8, 2003 07:38 AM
